NAGASAKI – As Hiroshima and
Nagasaki marked the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings, aging
survivors deplored what they called the hypocrisy by the Japanese
government following its decision to stay out of a treaty banning
nuclear arms.

Despite anger and calls from the survivors urging
Japan to join the historic treaty, a world free of nuclear weapons
remains elusive as the atomic-bombed nation sticks to a “realistic
approach” advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The prospect of survivors’s wishes being fulfilled had
looked brighter when Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S.
president to visit Hiroshima in May last year, when he espoused “a world
without nuclear weapons.”

Last month, just over a year after his
visit, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by
122 members of the United Nations. The accord acknowledges the
“unacceptable suffering” of the hibakusha — survivors of the bombings on
Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, that killed an estimated 214,000 people by the end
of that year.

But Japan and others under the U.S. nuclear umbrella
refused to take part in negotiations, as did the world’s nuclear-armed
states.

Defending Japan’s stance, Abe said at a news conference in
Hiroshima that joining the treaty could “result in the distance between
nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapons states being further widened.”

His remark angered 78-year-old Hiroshima hibakusha Hiroshi Harada, former head of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

“Of
course the hibakusha are angry, but we’re getting old and those of us
who can really speak out are getting fewer and fewer,” Harada said.

The survivors’ average age was 81.41 as of March.

“If
the Japanese government isn’t going to do anything, I don’t want (Abe)
to keep describing Japan in his speeches as ‘the only country to have
sustained atomic bombings in wartime,’ ” Harada said. “If you’re going
to tout that fact, you need to follow it up with the appropriate
action.”

Hiroshima peace activist Haruko Moritaki, 78, said it was
“embarrassing” how Japan’s envoy turned up on the first day of treaty
negotiations at the U.N. headquarters in New York in March, only to say
the country would not be taking part.

“Japan has shamed itself on
the international stage … unless we change our policy, we are in no
position to try to persuade other countries to abolish nuclear weapons,”
she said.

In addition to Japan’s reluctant stance, Obama’s
successor Donald Trump has called for the United States to bolster its
nuclear arsenal, staking a position at odds with decades of efforts to
scale back the nation’s atomic weaponry.

Peter Kuznick, professor
of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American
University, said developments since Obama’s visit have shown the
futility of expecting the U.S. administration to move closer to a world
without nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Hiroshima, Kuznick said that
while Obama subsequently abandoned consideration of a “no first use”
policy that would have made the world safer, and authorized a $1
trillion program to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, his successor is
“impulsive.”

Before his election last year, Trump had also
suggested that Japan and South Korea could acquire nuclear weapons in
the future, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to rule
this out in a March interview with U.S. media, according to U.S.
reports.

In such an environment, the Abe government has apparently
made a judgment that it cannot join the treaty without compromising its
heavily U.S.-dependent national security, particularly in light of
North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“Having
seen the transition from Obama to Trump, I’ve found it basically
doesn’t matter who’s in charge,” peace activist Moritaki said. “It’s
both our duty and our right to stand up for peace on our own.”

But
despite the difficult environment facing Japan, Akira Kawasaki, an
executive committee member of Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization
Peace Boat, said joining the treaty would put Japan in a better position
to persuade Pyongyang to disarm.

“Many people do not fully
understand the historic importance of this treaty … it provides a
pathway for ex-nuclear weapon states to dismantle their arsenals, and as
of the present there’s no other international treaty that does that,”
Kawasaki said.

Kawasaki suggests that if Japan cannot join now, it
should set a policy goal to join the treaty with one condition: That
both North and South Korea must also join at the same time.

“Having
North Korea join the treaty will benefit Japan and South Korea in a
security sense, while those two countries will have to commit to not
stationing U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil, thus reassuring North
Korea and encouraging it to disarm,” he said.

Although such a move
might be mere symbolism without a change of leadership in North Korea,
it is something the Abe government can do for now to regain some
integrity as the guardian of the only country to have sustained wartime
atomic bombings, Kawasaki said.

Some sort of commitment — that is
what 83-year-old Sachiko Matsuo called for in Nagasaki, where at age 11
she lived through the atomic bombing that killed nearly half her family.

“We
hibakusha have taken our time to get to this point, so we understand
that not everything can be done quickly,” she said. “But (Japan) mustn’t
give up. What we need is a first step.”

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This is a blog about what interests me. Here you will find stories on animals, including animal rights material, cute stuff, and random informative posts about weird, beautiful and interesting creatures. Horses, Spotted Hyenas, and Border Collies will make regular appearances.
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